When family interferes with work: cognitive dissonance, identity centrality and entrepreneurs’ pivot intention

Purpose Entrepreneurial pivoting helps firms manage risk and uncertainty, yet prior research has focused mainly on firm-level and market-based drivers, paying limited attention to family-related pressures at the entrepreneur level. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory and identity theory, this study aims to examine whether family–work conflict shapes entrepreneurs’ pivot intention and clarifies the cognitive mechanism and identity-based boundary condition underlying this effect. Design/methodology/approach The study uses two complementary empirical designs. Study 1 is a vignette-based experiment with 81 part-time MBA students in China, testing the causal effect of family–work conflict on pivot intention and the mediating role of cognitive dissonance. Study 2 is a two-wave, time-lagged field survey of 239 Chinese entrepreneurs, examining the generalizability of the mediation model and testing entrepreneurial identity centrality as a moderator of the mediated pathway. Findings Across the two studies, family–work conflict was positively associated with entrepreneurs’ pivot intention, and cognitive dissonance mediated this relationship. Entrepreneurial identity centrality positively moderated the second stage of the mediated pathway: the effect of cognitive dissonance on pivot intention was stronger, and the overall indirect effect was larger, when entrepreneurial identity centrality was higher than when it was low. Originality/value This study extends pivoting research from the venture–market interface to the entrepreneur–family interface by identifying family–work conflict as a non-market, individual-level antecedent of pivot intention. It specifies cognitive dissonance as a micro-level mechanism through which cross-role conflict becomes strategically consequential. It also shows that entrepreneurial identity centrality can amplify the translation of cognitive dissonance into pivot intention.